Title: Let the Loop Run

Rating: Pick a letter, any letter… is your letter M? Then you win!

Summary: It rips her apart and puts her together at the same time.

Disclaimer: If I owned Looper I would have given it a happy ending because I am a sentimental sucker that way.

Most of the time, she likes to forget. She folds up the memories carefully, tucks them away in a drawer, locks it and buries them in the darkest recesses of her heart.

Most of the time she can distract herself with Cid. He's getting better at controlling himself ever since the cornfield, and he's so very clever. He'll do great things, she tells him, as she tucks him in bed and he calls her Mommy.

Most of the time she hides. Sometimes it's behind a smile, or in a smoke, or a good book. She's started studying French. She isn't sure why. Cid picks up languages like some people pick up stones – easy, smooth, and natural. She's still stuck on past and present tense. Don't even get her started on conjunctions.

But sometimes, on some days, she can't evade or ignore. Some nights she's tired all the way down to her bones and her bed is so big and cold she wants to weep.

Today is a someday. Tonight, she lets the loop run.

That morning Cid refuses to do his math again, the dishwasher breaks and she's got to drive fifty miles or so to a one-horse town to order the replacement part that won't come in for another two weeks, she only gets halfway through spraying the crops before she runs out of chemical, and she stumbles across those two flashlight frogs in the bottom of her underwear drawer.

They still work.

That afternoon she breaks two plates, the television is on the fritz again, and Cid informs her that Joe was learning French. She doesn't know how he knows. A part of her wants to burn the French books, but another wants to study harder than ever.

She spends an extra hour and finally understands the difference between elle attrape la balle and elle a attrapé la balle.

That night Cid decides to try to shave and cuts himself, the leak in the tap is getting worse, and when she goes to reload her shotgun she discovers she's out of ammo.

She tucks Cid in bed, kissing his forehead and his bandaged cut, and collapses on top of her unmade sheets. The cigarette is in her hand before she even knows it and as she draws it into her lungs she can feel her nerves start to settle a little. When she blows out the smoke she remembers, the memory rising to the surface like the smoke on the wind.

That's where he stood. Right there. Watching me… I played with the lighter.

He'd been impressed with how she could manipulate it, and she'd told him how she used to one-up the show offs who tried to pick her up. God, she was such a mess then. She's a mess now, but it's a different kind.

On these evenings the order of the programming can vary, but the actual material is always the same.

She thinks about what it would be like if he was still there. She's an independent woman, fully capable of caring for herself and her son, but there's no denying that she is physically incapable of some things (like tightening the leaking tap) and having an extra pair of hands would make things go faster. He'd probably figure out a way to fix the TV, like he fixed up the frogs. And she's not going to lie – a man with a shotgun is always more intimidating to trespassers than a woman with the same weapon.

And she knows for a fact that her bed wouldn't feel so large, or be so cold. Hell, she might even wash the sheets more than once a month. She's pretty sure she's sleeping on bedbugs.

She always thinks about that night. Sometimes it's the first thing to pop up, and other times it's the last. Tonight it's somewhere in the middle. It'd been… what, two years? She'd only just gotten herself off of the hard drugs, hadn't even begun to detox from alcohol when she got the news about her sister.

Wynne. Her parents had been so sure it was a boy. She was a good girl, not at all like Sara, the disappointment. The news had hit her like a gut punch. Mothering a troubled boy she hardly knew but instinctively loved… and she did love him. It was hard, she won't deny she's cried many tears of frustration, but she wouldn't trade it. He sobered her up more quickly than any program.

Still, she can't deny that she's far from blind, and she could tell that Joe was a good person. Hidden a little, underneath the weariness and the hardness that you had to develop to survive this dry, exhausted world. But it was there, and she welcomed it.

It was a stupid decision, perhaps, inviting him into her bed like that. But she can't bring herself to regret it. She gets lost in the memory of sensation, phantom touches that work their way up her body, ghosts of what once was warm and real.

He held her with such tenderness. She hadn't expected that. She'd expected a bit more… well, roughness. It was all she was used to. But something… something in him, something small and vulnerable, was peeking out and reaching, searching for an answering touch. He planted the smallest, softest kisses on her body, scattering them over every inch. He'd suck and nip, too, but afterwards he'd drop those kisses like he was apologizing for something. Whether he was apologizing to himself or to her, she couldn't be certain.

It was slow, another thing she wasn't used to but found she enjoyed. He held her wrists in one of his hands, pinned above her head, but she knew she could wriggle out if she'd felt like it. His other hand ran up and down her body, his touch at times hard and others soft but always reverent. She's never thought of herself as a looker. Her lips are huge and her mouth takes up her entire face, her eyes are a strange shape and her breasts are not nearly big enough to make up for her lack of curves and annoyingly muscular limbs. But when she saw his face, the color of his eyes swallowed by his pupils and his jaw flexing as he pants, there was something in the way he looked at her that made her feel beautiful.

The rhythm was a good one. She remembers that clearly. The bed creaked, broken down thing that it is, and she's never been so sweaty in her life. His skin was hot and marked by scars, but it felt smooth and supple under her hands, like good leather. The feel of him in her hurt at first, painful like a burn, but it faded and he was patient, waiting for her nod before he moved. After that, it felt good. Better than she'd remembered with others, and she didn't think it was just because of the two-year abstinence. When he got close she was nowhere near, and to her surprise he must have realized it because he reached down and felt between them, sliding his fingers through her folds until he found her clit, making her body skyrocket. He kissed her, his mouth practically swallowing hers to keep them quiet and avoid waking Cid. His tongue raked the roof of her mouth and she whimpered because it felt so damn good.

They finished seconds apart. It was a terrible, terrible cliché and she felt like a naïve teenager for dwelling on it, but it meant something to her.

In the moments afterwards, when they were occupied with getting their breath back, she ran her fingers absentmindedly through his hair. He'd relaxed into her like a cat in a patch of sunlight, laying another kiss on her skin. His head had been between her breasts so it was a little difficult to breathe but she hadn't minded. For some reason she got the impression that her simple, unconscious gesture meant more to him than anything else that had just transpired.

And afterwards he'd cleaned up and gotten dressed, watching her smoke.

She aches between her thighs at the memories, and she wishes she could take care of herself but she can't in her current condition. She doesn't want to risk anything, not with the nearest hospital over a hundred miles away and her car on only half a tank of gas.

She presses her hand into her belly, smoothing it over the taut roundness. It reminds her of a watermelon. She used to eat them out on the porch when she was a kid, competing with Wynne on spitting seeds and letting the juice dribble down her chin and soak up her clothes, making her hair and arms all sticky.

Did Joe ever get to do things like that? She never asked him about his childhood – or about much of anything, for that matter. She wishes she had, but then, they weren't exactly in a position to make constant small talk.

She wishes their time together had been longer, or better spent, or possibly both. She passes her hand over her swollen belly again and remembers she has only four months left. Four months to sell the place, pack up, and move out.

When Joe crashed the truck there'd been more silver and gold than she cared to count at the time. She got the feeling that it was meant for her, from him, but she couldn't get herself to use it. She knew it was what it would have wanted, what he did want if there was an afterlife and he was a part of it. And moving into a nicer place, in a nice neighborhood, where Cid could get the education he was craving, was all for the best. She'd promised herself she'd use the bars, do it before the baby came, but she'd been procrastinating.

She let the picture float in her head: picking out a place, selling, moving out… with him by her side. He'd be excited for the baby. She knows it, like she knows the sun rises in the east.

Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow she'll start packing. Most of the stuff she'll sell on an Internet flea market anyway. If she hurries she can finish in a couple of days, and then it's just a matter of cleaning and fixing up the odds and ends. There are always farmers looking for new land, better land, hoping that this time the crops will grow like they should.

She'll buy a place, something modest so she can save most of the bars for Cid. There'll have to be a room for Joe to grow up in, though. Boy or girl, that's her baby's name. She'll just drop the e, tell people she's named after the Little Women character, and tell the hospital her husband was shot by a trespasser. Cash is suspicious but metal never loses its value and she's doesn't need to keep it in a bank. It'll be easy. She can manage it.

She snuffs out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. She'll have to quit smoking as well, she knows. The prospect is daunting.

Tomorrow she'll close the loop in her head, hide it away and pretend it doesn't exist.

But tonight, she lets the loop run.

Random note here – that scene with the older version of his friend, with the body parts falling off and all? That scene is one of the freakiest things I have ever seen. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do horror. No blood or chainsaws needed.

I'd love a huge collection of silver bars and a blunderbuss, but I'll settle for a review.